It happens to all writers at some point: we’re on a roll, the words are flowing from our mind like some kind of nice, flowy thing; we start to fall in love with our story all over again. And then we hit it: a lull. We know we want to get from beginning to end,…
Here is a quick tip that has proven to be extremely helpful for me with my latest writing. On the horrible occasion when you suddenly find yourself stuck on a scene, before you resort to other “writer’s block tactics,” consider this: there is a problem a few sentences back. I can’t remember if I heard…
This is another unexpected slice of writing advice bestowed upon me by a creative writing professor. His instruction was for us to get into the proper mindset for a specific tone or style by taking someone else’s work and writing it out several times by hand. It sounds odd, and I was quite skeptical of…
A lot of times, particularly when it comes to the climactic events of our stories, we are eventually offered two choices in what happens next. At its most basic formula, this looks like either the villain is going to win, or the hero is going to win—and usually it’s the hero. You typically want to…
I had a creative writing instructor once tell the class that, sometimes, when he was going through a case of writer’s block, he would start with the title of a piece and go from there. And one of the best places for titles, he said, was Craigslist. He told us to go through the “For…